Green to Red

“If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.”  Thus remarked Paul McCartney.. And Purav followed these famous words religiously.

It has never been easy to be green, especially in our part of the country. So when Purav Agarwal got through in the medical entrance examination and left his ‘green abode’ of the ‘purely-vegetarian-only-paneer-desi ghee-and-soya chhaap’ household in Aathgaon, Guwahati, he faced the biggest challenge of his life. Sharing his second floor twin-sharing hostel room with Johnny Bailung from Diphu, he was exposed to the non-vegetarian ambrosia which was unseen, unheard and abhorred till now in his eighteen years of existence on earth.

Day 1 was the trailer. While lunch for the majority comprised of steaming fish curry and boiled eggs, the hungry vegetarian mortals had to be content with dal (which was 80% water and 20% pulses, and the ladle had to be angled deep into the stainless steel bowl if you wanted to see the face of the half-cooked dal particles through an ocean of yellow water) and half-cooked generously salted potato fry cooked in rancid mustard oil. A starving Purav looked longingly at his senior Sameer relishing the perfectly oval glistening boiled egg while he himself nibbled pathetically at his limp potato wedges....

Purav consoled himself on his way back to the medicine ward for his clinical tutorials – after all, these non-vegetarian meat-eaters have a contemptuous diet of blood, flesh, veins, muscles, tendons, cow secretions, hen periods and bee vomit. Do not the meat-eaters use the hollowed-out rectum of a dead bird or animal for stuffing? He remembered Bailung gobbling down cocoons of some slimy moth the other day with his daily staple peg of whisky. And people think vegetarians are weird because they eat tofu! Well, Purav thanked his stars that he was more human and compassionate as far as food was concerned.

Ragging, classes, dissection, and semesters – all were taking its toll on Purav. And added to that, the runny dal and the rotten mixed vegetable or potato fry was making him edgy by the day. The six-foot-two-inches hefty lad was losing weight and felt starved most of the times. Paneer was served once a week, and finding the tiny flakes of cheese in the mysterious brown gravy was like finding a needle in the haystack. In other words, Purav went plain hungry most of the days. Maa-ke-haath-ka-khana was a luxury which he could not indulge in regularly in view of his rapidly decreasing number of visits home nowadays.

It was about seven months later on a rainy night in Hostel No. 4 that Purav saw Shoumen Paul of fourth year with a mountainful of steaming rice and a sizeable piece of fish. The mountain was being demolished at an astonishingly fast pace, while the fish remained untouched. At the penultimate stage, Shoumen da picked up the fish carefully, and started eating it slowly with the remaining small hillock of rice. He saw Purav staring at him and remarked, ”I ate the major portion of the rice by looking at the fish piece and thinking about its wonderful taste, and relished it leisurely at last – the grand finale!”

This remark made Purav make a decision – that he will taste the gravy only. After all, fish do not ‘leak’ their fishiness in to the gravy! He look a bowl of the steaming curry, mixed the rice and lo! Here came the taste of heavenly bliss. Purav almost cried out of happiness. With the gravy came a few pieces of boiled vegetables too. And they tasted succulent and juicy. He peered down to identify the vegetable, and much to his horror he saw that he was chewing softrohu meat....

But the damage was already done...He wondered if his vegetarianism was an exotic illness among this vast majority of non-vegetarians.

The next day was Sunday. Purav tried chicken gravy for lunch. In the evening, he went to his batchmate Mitali’s birthday party at her home. Mitali’s mother had cooked chicken curry with pulao, and after many sympathetic words of consolation upon knowing about his vegetarianism, he was given a burger bun with a salad. That the beginning of the end of Purav’s pure-vegetarian status.

Pretty soon he graduated from a cautious fish eater to being capable of selecting the boneless pieces for himself. Purav remembered his first day at MOMO-GHAR, the famous outlet at Ambari.  He was served pork momo, and when he pointed out to the waiter that he was a vegetarian, the waiter said, with a completely straight face, "It came from a vegetarian pig." Purav still does not know whether he was joking.

Soon after, his concerned fellow vegetarian called up his mother and said, “Aunty, Purav nowadays eats pork momo.” The poor lady, for whom pork momo or drumstick were Greek words, replied happily, “Ok dear, I will not cook dinner for him tonight then. Thanks for telling me; I can now rush to the kitty party at my sister-in-law’s place.”

So, as Purav retreated to his hostel room after a generous meal of mutton curry and roti in his final year of medical college, he thanked his stars. Now he need not explain that he did not eat any form of meat including fish, and no one retreated into the kitchen, a puzzled and slightly outraged look on his or her face. No one poked their heads out for a shifty look at this strange creature who did not eat animals. And in the core, he still remained a vegetarian – becausevegetables are what they feed animals before they kill and serve them.